Man who once skipped country while facing sex assault charges now charged with child porn

A Lisbon man who once went on the run to South America while facing charges of sexually assaulting a minor is now charged with possessing child pornography.

Thomas D. Friedel, 56, was charged Jan. 3 in Waukesha County Circuit Court with two counts of felony possession of child pornography after police found a computer in his home containing several child porn videos, a criminal complaint said.

In 2008, Friedel, who lived in West Allis at the time, was charged in Waukesha County with sexually assaulting a child younger than 13, and a warrant was issued for his arrest, according to court records.

He fled before his first court appearance and was arrested more than three years later in September 2011 in Barranquilla, Colombia, according to a U.S. Marshals Service news release issued at the time.

In 2012, Friedel was found guilty of a lesser charge — causing mental harm to a child — and sentenced to five years' probation.

Latest charges

Detectives with the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department began investigating Friedel in May 2017 after Department of Corrections employees told them they suspected Friedel was using his computer to view child pornography, the complaint said. Friedel was under the supervision of the Department of Corrections' parole unit at the time.

On May 2, officers made an unannounced visit to Friedel's home, N67 W22208 Willow Spring Road Unit F25, the complaint said. When they knocked, they saw Friedel try to hide a computer, something he is forbidden from using, under the conditions of his probation.

Friedel turned the computer over to officers, and a search revealed videos of naked children in sexually explicit poses, the complaint said.

A detective conducting a more thorough search found "a number of videos that contained females less than 18 years old, exercising, naked, and in sexually explicit ways," the complaint said. The detective also found "many other videos depicting what appears to be child pornography."